[GTALUG] VMware ESXi Licensing and Quality

[Giles Orr]

On 13 October 2017 at 13:47, Alvin Starr <alvin at netvel.net> wrote:

> On 10/13/2017 12:33 PM, Giles Orr via talk wrote:
>
>> I'm having some trouble figuring out the licensing on VMware's ESXi.
>> It's proprietary - I've got that and I don't love it.  But Packt's "DevOps
>> Automation Cookbook" (2015) is essentially saying it's free to use, and
>> implying - I don't think they ever stated it outright - that it's
>> permanently free.  But on VMware's site ( https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMw
>> are-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc/GUID-7AFC
>> C64B-7D94-48A0-86CF-8E7EF55DF68F.html ) it reads as if it's a 60 day
>> evaluation, period.
>>
>> Which brings up a few questions:
>> - is ESXi technically good enough that I should be pursuing this at all?
>> (I'm currently using Proxmox.  It works, I'm not entirely happy with it,
>> but I'll probably stick with it because of the licensing which is more open
>> source friendly)
>> - is ESXi permanently free? and can you get security updates if you're on
>> the free licensing?
>> - is there anything appalling in their license? eg. Facebook's recent
>> license clauses "using our products means you can't ever sue us for
>> anything" (point applies even though they fixed it)
>>
>>
>> I have clients using VMware and Proxmox and VirtualBox and I use
> virt-manager and OpenStack for my own use.
>
> VMware and VirtualBox tend to do better on windows systems and stuff like
> USB devices and both are really easy to use to put up one of virtual
> machines.
> Both also have CLI interfaces that can be used if your desperate.
> There are some add on packages for VirtualBox to give it a GUI
>
> Proxmox is more or less the moral equivalent of virt-manager that can only
> manage continers and KVM along with some hooks for HA.
> Proxmox has the upside of a web interface where virt-manager is an X based
> application.
> Virt-manger has the upside of letting you manage a variety of
> virtualization engines beyond KVM.
>
> For small sized personal/experimental use all are acceptable.
> Proxmox has the upside that you can use it like an appliance and just
> install it fairly trivially.
> Virt-manager works nicely if you like managing the OS that your
> virtualiztion sits on top of.
>
> If you have complex networking or storage requirements then something like
> OpenStack or the other cloud managers start to make sense but the minimum
> size there is 3-5 machines before it begins to make sense.
>
> I would say stick with Proxmox.
>
> What is your Proxmox problem?
>

Umm - laziness?

The more I think about it, the more it seems like a good idea to stick with
what I've got.  Thanks Digimer and Alvin for making me think about it.

-- 
Giles
https://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com
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